Eavesdropping and Research: Reflections on Listening to Trauma

Abstract

Although there is an agreement on the existence of psychic effects produced by working with traumatized persons, the predominant approach, consolidated by the psy-sciences, considers that listening to trauma configures a space for symptomatic contagion, where subjects do not seem to have any active role. Thus, from a psychoanalytic perspective, and using examples from literature, I propose an alternative to understand what is at stake in listening to trauma, particularly in research practice, emphasizing the role of the listener as an involved subject who must manage her/his position in the face of the losses and absences embedded in the witness’s experience.